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Physics & Astronomy Colloquium

February 1, 2017 @ 3:45 pm - 5:00 pm

Postdoc Mini-Colloquia

Two of our new postdocs will present short (20 minute) talks on their research.

Speaker:   Sandro Kopper (IceCube)
Title:   Of Taus and Staus: Non-Standard Event Signatures in IceCube

Abstract:
Physics theories beyond the Standard Model, like Supersymmetry and models with extra dimensions, often invoke Z2-symmetries in order to avoid new couplings that lead to unobserved new physics like unnaturally fast proton decay. This gives rise to the possibility of heavy new particles being produced in pairs with the lightest of them being (meta-)stable. Thus, under favorable conditions, neutrinos in the PeV range can produce pairs of exotic, charged particles that can be seen in a km3-sized detector as two parallel, muon-like tracks with a track separation of a few hundred meters. The first part of this talk will be about the search of such events with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

Neutrinos observed by Icecube in the PeV range are an indication of an astrophysical neutrino flux. High energy neutrinos of an astrophysical origin, unlike atmospheric neutrinos, are expected to have a significant contribution of tau neutrinos. Some efforts to find and confirm the signal this kind of particles are expected to produce will be discussed briefly in the second part of the talk.

 
Speaker: Arun Kumar Soma
Title: Experimental Studies on Dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay
Abstract:  The evidences for dark matter with an insight to their properties and experimental challenges will be discussed. The desired extension to the standard model of particle physics results in new particles with required properties and give rise to a class of particles called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP’s). The process of overcoming the experimental challenges by using high purity germanium detectors at Taiwan EXperiment on NeutrinO (TEXONO) and China Dark matter EXperiment (CDEX) will be explained.

The large mass requirement can only be achieved by developing detector development facilities. The efforts towards setting up the Germanium detector characterization facility and the studies performed on undoped CsI scintillator detectors at university of South Dakota will be highlighted.

Future research activity: I will be working on EXO-200 (Enriched Xenon Observatory) experiment. To model and optimize the light collection and detection in next generation of experiment (nEXO) an extensive studies are being perused in the department through LIXO (LIquid Xenon Optical characterization) setup. The status and future plan will be presented.

Details

Date:
February 1, 2017
Time:
3:45 pm - 5:00 pm
Event Categories:
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Website:
https://physics.ua.edu/recent-events/colloquia/

Venue

227 Gallalee Hall
514 University Blvd.
Tuscaloosa, AL 35401 United States
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Organizer

Karen Lynn